Psalm 30:5

For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: 
weeping may endure for a night, but 

joy cometh in the morning.

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I think about quitting
Facebook, altogether:

maybe I don't want to know. I don't want to know, but
then I look

I can't seem to help but look

I don't like how that feels about me, to me. Looking

and snooping around

and, possibly, not having anything better to do. Is your Macintosh

a $3000-dollar

Facebook machine? I think about putting up
a timely quote
a smart remark
something sincere
genuine. It all plays badly, in preview. I think about
chiming in
but I don't like the tone, mine, or anyone else's. So I just say,
I like it

and then leave.

But I'll be back
sooner than I want to
sooner, and more often, than I'll admit
and I know it already
unfortunately

I want to quit this tired and kind of dirty thing
I want to be better

but we're not yet done hooking up.

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Snow comes, swirling in the coming dark outside
I turn to watch it, framed by plate-glass windows, while
a good-looking young man makes my espresso drink, and
the girl he works with, who has a famous-sounding voice
that I can't place
turns to watch it too, and in the absence
of any other customers
and the abrupt quiet of the shop, from the Christmas
CD ending, and the hissing steam of the
espresso machine and the refrigeration case cycling off,
it feels as if someone had turned everything off for the night, the whole town,
and left us there, forgotten
without any smiling banter to define our
snowy-evening, holiday-time, shopkeeper and patron relationship -
we look at each other, a little uneasily,
like meeting in the morning in the kitchen, in daylight, finding a glass of water
after a one-night stand
well, hello, how are you -

the real me, and the real you -

we all laugh, a little awkwardly,
and the good-looking young man starts the music back up
and the girl begins to re-arrange the counter, and rinse things out in the sink, and
I remember my bags, and wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and push the wooden door open -

I step down onto the brick sidewalk, already covered
in a light layer of snow, and the wind
blows snowflakes down into my bags, and straight into my face and eyes, and also
down into my collar, making
cold little kisses on my neck -
I walk away from the shop, and
into the intimate darkness.

Card #45

Two more children, foster, or adopted. A little older, like 5 or 7 or 9 or 11 years old, maybe some medical issues. A girl, named Liberty. Another girl, or maybe a boy, I don't know, and I don't know the name. College, paid for, for all four kids. Little bit bigger house just so each kid has their own room. Or our house with enough of an addition to achieve that.

School. An accelerated program. A nursing degree. To complement the social work and public health practice. I could get in 30 years of public health care. Maybe some international work for a few years, with Matt, with him doing sanitation systems, me the basic health care and education, in someplace that really needs it, before we're too old.

That's what I would do with my million.

Hey

Why you make me wait so long?

Huh? Why is that?

Why you do that, Ruby. Just, why?

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By the time
its November I will
be all over it, be all over
you I will hang up the hang ups. You can
talk to the crows. I can take
some walks in the early morning
when every cobweb
is silvered with damp
when the fog socks it all in
and by the time
mists are excited by sunrise
stirring and then streaming
off the water
rising into chimneys
I'll be more than fine. I'll be
solidly November. Damp leaves, rotty smells,
cool air steamy sweat, shivering with wet. I'll be
running. I'll be breathing hard. My chest
will burn my heart
will pound I'll kick into the dirt. I'll be
out of the weeds and into the woods. I'll be
socks and warm soup
after a cold hard rain. A rain
all day. I'll be the last of the asters in an
old valley cemetery. Pincushion moss. Stone
epithets, both sets of dates: born, died.
I'll be the cadaver. I'll be
the solid grey sky. I'll be the
crunchy brown oak leaves
all over you
more than fine
by the calendar
inevitably

until the month after that. And after that. and
after that. and after that too.

You can talk to the crows.

An American Myth

Chaplaincy

I am awake in my boat. My boat is on the stormy sea. I will not sail. I will not row. I will quietly look at the stars

fixed in their places. 

*All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of thing shall be well. 

*Julian of Norwich

T.

One of my favorite things we used to do was to run at each other as fast as we could the moment we first saw each other. On campus, where I went to school and he worked; in the grocery store; walking in approaching directions on one of the streets near our house. 

T. was athletic and he could certainly outrun me but he went for style as well as speed. If he was carrying anything, he either dropped it immediately like a dead body, or threw it as high as he could into the air. Once he threw a paper he was reading while walking into the air and by the time it fluttered down he was already a block away. He would run while kind of doing this gallopy hopping at the same time, sometimes punctuated by this very fast hand clapping and grinning. When we would get within a block or two of each other, we would both throw our arms up in the air in a big dihedral "V" like turkey vultures and then hold them exactly that way for the remainder of the running. Its really actually pretty hard to run fast with your arms up that way. 

When we would get within a few feet of each other T. would slow down and I would speed up, and he would bend his knees to bring the trunk of his body down to be even with mine. I would push off my right leg because that's my stronger leg, and I would jump into his arms. I just loved how that felt. My whole entire body would be in the air for at least a few seconds, or it felt like that, and then every part of my body would be in contact with his. His arms would come around my back and waist so fast, and he would just totally crush me into him. I would bury my face in the hollow of his neck and he always smelled so strong. He was not a daily showerer and he didn't wear deodorant, I don't think. But he always smelled so nice to me, in a full and rich and powerful kind of way. Sometimes his hair would flip forward and his ponytail would fall against my neck. He had great hair. Thick, thick black strands, always gathered in a low ponytail, often using one of my hair elastics shoplifted from my basket of hair things in our bathroom. 

There were so many other things I loved about T. but that was my favorite. It surprised me at that age, in my last year of college, and it still surprises me now how hard it is to find someone who will truly play with you. Who will commit to dropping everything on a regular basis to make, and enjoy, a moment of joy. Who sees it something like I do, that things are important and serious in life and that they are also a zen-nothingness, absurd, intangible, rice-paper-thin and dissolving and gone, threaded with death and receding into invisibility like a wind-thiefed balloon into the sky. It feels easy to play to me when I can see myself as really just an electronic battery icon, simultaneously living and generating while also depleting and running out. Living, and dying, at once.

Every single time T. ran at me and I ran at him I was happy and I think he was too. Every time we got to the crash and hold part I was also happy, and full, and I felt like I loved him simply and truly and he loved me back. I think he felt that way too. Its hard to imagine he would have kept doing the whole routine for as long as he was alive if he didn't. He would have known I would have wanted him to, but he didn't like me that much. 

It was three months from the last time we did a run and crash, when we spotted each other walking in different directions on Eddy St., to the moment he shot himself in the temple with a gun he had bought a few weeks earlier. By then I was gone and living in Seattle, and he had moved out of our apartment and was living with our mutual friend G. G. was the one who found him, in a pool of blood on his bed, and T. must have known it would be G. to find him. There weren't any other housemates at the time. G. was so angry about that, for a long time. The selfishness of T. doing that to him, leaving him with that image in his head. 

I don't know why he did that. Shot himself. I don't know what it was about. I still think about it a lot, 20 years later. He was a housemate and a friend. He wasn't a best friend, really. Our lives were really different and we only lived together for 6 months. But I did have a genuine love for him. And I know he loved me too. That's a lot, in addition to the run-and-crash, in 6 months. 

I think sometimes that I wish I had been more serious with him, that if I had been, I might have gotten a feel for something going on in his moods or thinking and that I might have been able to somehow influence him away from death and towards life. Affect his trajectory, directly or indirectly, and change the part of his future when he takes the gun he bought out of the trunk of his car, walks up the stairs, sits on the edge of his bed, puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger. What would it take, how much would have had to have been different, to change that part? I don't know. I didn't know. I had no idea that his battery icon was outlined in red, that warnings were beginning to come up on the screen to plug the device in now before automatic shutdown and loss of data occurred. 

When G. called me to tell me T. died, I felt and I still feel undeserving that I got so much of T. in those last 6 months. He had a girlfriend, a sister, an ex-girlfriend, a mother, a best friend from grade school. But a lot of his time for those last 6 months of his life was with me in our apartment, teaching me how to make curry, showing me his collection of Japanese weapons and his comic books, making me heavy metal mix tapes to counteract what he saw as my terrible folksy taste in music, watching MTV with me late at night in our kitchen, sitting on the folded and duct-taped mattress that was our couch. And doing the run-and-crash. 

The truth is, I would like to run-and-crash just about everyone I love, and everyone I like. I would like to hurl a gallon of milk and a plastic bag with blueberries and a roasting chicken and a bag of pretzels sky-high and take off up my street doing the gallopy-hop. But at 40 years old I don't find there are a lot of takers. I think most people I know would be OK about it once, maybe. I think if I did it the way I would really want to do it, all in, they would find me to be what they consider a little abnormal. I might be. That's possible. My kids would do it. There are people I love who might participate, but they aren't here, and are all far away. 

Nothing is different, though. I still sometimes do mental run-throughs of run-and-crash with T. when walking around, as if he might be just around the next corner, and I need to be ready, even though he's been dead for 20 years. Twenty years later and that's still with me. That means something really good, I think. I still have the impulse to do it when I see someone I love, and I sometimes hug that person that way, and smell their necks, although I do it with discreet restraint, and I don't drop or throw anything up in the air beforehand. 

Nevertheless. Run-and-crash. And T. I still feel about all of it the same way. I still say, and think, and believe: joy. Joy. And death, too. 

Both, at the same time. 

Death

The body dies while it lives. My heart dies. 27% of my heart is dead, from infection. I thought we were watching West Wing reruns and recovering from weariness, my heart and I. I thought I was figuratively heartsick. Dear heart, sweetheart, I thought you were pounding in my chest like that just to shake me a little, just to say hi. I thought you were pounding and that you and I were full. Full hearts.

You weren't. You were resisting a mugging. You were slapping his hands away and yelling, really loudly. You were trying to run except you were tethered and chained in my chest.

A little bit of my heart is dead. No one broke it. It got sick, it died. Its how it happens.

Its not a euphemism. Its just viruses, being dead themselves, being elegant, being perfect at what they do. If you're going to strive for the highest possible level of consciousness while your ticker is still ticking, forget about mediation, yoga, certain books, certain music, certain things with certain people.

Fall in love with a virus instead. I did. A virus stole my heart. A piece of my heart.

All is fair in love. I don't know yet about war.

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One time, Jared asked me to come to a function at the house he lived in. He had advantages, living in that house. He was special for living there and he was probably special all on his own, though I don't remember, or possibly I never knew, what it was about him that made that so.

He was from California. He had great hair. He was charmingly nervous underneath his coolness, adaptability, and intelligence. I was...I don't know what I was. I was 19 years old. I didn't own a dress. I borrowed someone's plum-colored cotton sheath in a size two sizes too big for me. I had some white satin ribbon, I'm not sure why. I tied a cord of it around my throat and I sewed some of it to my shoes and wound it around my ankles. I put my hair up. That's how dressing up still goes pretty often for me. I think its safe to say now that I'm not the girl with the right thing to wear, or the ease. I don't hate it, or mock it. It just moves away from me, like same-poled magnet ends.

He liked the way I looked. He liked me well enough although he did all the talking. He liked, I think, my listening. I think I can now and could then listen so hard that it would knock you out. Its not my party trick or my thing. Its not my way in or my way of getting you to stop thinking about you, while you're talking about you, and instead notice me.

Its just what I would like to do, usually. I'm generally interested. I'd like to know you, usually. And also it works with my shyness. That hasn't changed. I do now have a dress appropriate to each season that fits, and shoes and some jewelry that will go with it. Its 20 years later, and now I have something to wear that I don't have to sew an hour before I get picked up. It seems like a grown-up thing to arrange for myself that makes me feel a little better. It alleviates the background anxiety a small amount, to have that in place, and to know its in place. I don't want to have the outfit for you, so that you like the way I look. I just don't want to have to find something to borrow and then sew on it to make it OK. Its for me.  It gets it out of the way.

Anyway, that night we listened to a famous newsman give a speech. We had a glass of wine and we held hands and we had a small kiss goodnight after sitting for a long time afterwards in his musty basement apartment, him smoking weed, me in the beanbag chair, him talking, me listening, with party lights on and ska music playing. Then I got a ride home with a friend and the friend and I had a small kiss goodnight with the car idling, the dashboard lights on, the radio playing the college station. He liked the dress too, and especially the choker ribbon.

I walked into my dormitory and waited for the friend's car to pull away. I think back on that, and I thank fucking god for the world without a smartphone just then, no texts, no pings, no notifications, no nothing. Just watch someone pull away in secrecy, from a room with the light turned off on purpose, and when they're gone, they're just actually really gone, and its over. Its done, its ended, its over. And you can say, OK, and goodbye to that whole thing.

I waited a few minutes and then I walked down the hill through a cemetery that was there. I found a particularly soft spot in front of a very old slate headstone, worn and illegible, under a pine tree, cobbled with mounds of pincushion moss. I laid down and untied the ribbon at my throat, ripped the ribbons off my shoes. Rubbed my neck a little. Put an arm back bent under my head. Looked at the stars through the pine branches. Was alone. Felt comfortable.

Listened to the wind in the pine branches overhead, and the murmur of voices going on up the hill.

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I remember that Lara and I used to go to the rock quarries to dive. We were 12, then 13, then 15. We didn't go the year we were 14, because that was the year that Lara's dad was always drunk, and pissing out by the pool because he couldn't make it to the house. Lara and I would cling to the edge of the pool in the deep end, with the very ends of our fingertips, heads as low in the water as we could get them, silent as we could be, hoping not to be seen. We didn't go to the rock quarries that year because Lara's mom was always screaming at her dad and then crying alone in her bedroom, and neither of us felt like being around her, but we also didn't think we could leave her. So we just hung out in the margins of the house and tried not to be seen.

At 12 and 13 we just did pencil dives, banana split dives, nothing head first. Then we were watching some TV show and one of the characters did a huge swan dive off a cliff and into the ocean. We were hooked. It took us hundreds of jumps and watching and commenting on each other to figure out how to do it. We never quit on it, even when each of us took a couple of turns almost killing ourselves at it. We got scared but we never stopped doing it. We did it every single day all that summer. I don't know what it was for her, but for me it was that long trajectory of so much relaxation, in the midst of so much simple and elegant control. An arc, like life, and then a good death.

Those rock quarries were so shitty. Little caves here and there in the woods full of graffiti and empty beer cans and broken glass. Poison ivy. Scrubby oak trees, hard little well-worn foot paths crisscrossing all over. Low stone walls running at angles with each other. Hardly any birds at all.

There were three pits in the quarries. Two were too narrow to swim or dive in. The third one was huge and square. A small cliff above that you could edge out on to get up and over it. Black-green water, freezing cold, never in the sunlight. Not a trace of frog or lily pad or bullrush or anything alive at all. An old knotted prickly rope that someone had tied to a tree draped over the quarry edge and just touching the surface of the water, the only way to get out once having gone in, hand over hand to haul yourself up the side.

We would walk to Lyman's pharmacy and buy a roll of the thickest medical tape they had. Sometimes it would be papery, sometimes plasticky, and sometimes kind of silky. It was always white. When we got to the quarries we would drop our shorts and pull off our shirts and hang them over tree branches. We always had our bathing suits on underneath, already. Then we would tape up our wrists as tight as we could stand it, until they were nearly rigid. We would rip the tape with our teeth to cut the ends.

When you hit the water, your hands would be in front of you, one hand grabbing the opposite wrist to brace it for the impact. And without the tape you would be guaranteed a mild sprain by the end of a few dives, from the force of the water snapping your wrist back, no matter how much you braced for it.

I remember that. I remember that perfect. The overcast sky and the too-still woods. Standing at the very edge of the cliff and looking into that opaque water. Being scared and happy and a little sad at the same time. Then bending your knees as deep as you could, and trying to pop up fast and hard and out. And then not feeling any feelings at all.

Falling and spreading arms as far out as they would go. Flying. Nothing but nothing, air, chest, lungs, arms, fingers fanned and extended and splayed like flight feathers. Thighs and ankles squeezing so hard together.

Popping your eyes open, searching for the water. There. Fast fast fast arms forward, head down, chin tucked, shoulders against ears, left hand grabbing tape on right wrist, grabbing and squeezing and making both arms into one, making a blade out of your fingers.

Then the shock of impact, and another shock of cold, and another shock at the deepness and the dark. Waiting for the dive to stop, underwater. Resisting the urge to kick for the surface, because you can't see the surface, and because you don't know where up is. Rising panic with air hunger as you wait to neutralize, then rise, showing you where is up. And then kicking and kicking for up. Swimming for the rope, scraping feet on the sheer vertical rock while hand-over-handing. Then watching Lara go, standing wet and shivering with dirty feet.

I remember that, although nothing in my life now should bring it to mind. No quarries, no shitty woods, no drunks and crying and pissing, no cliffs, no being 15 with a bathing suit on underneath clothes. It comes back exactly though, everything about it, usually when I'm driving a long drive. I remember the feel of the swanning, arms out and chest and heart bared, and it still makes me feel happy, and a little bit sad, and not really scared anymore.

And when I get out of the car, I sometimes will reach for my right wrist with my left hand, and brace it. I'll brace it when I'm talking to someone about something big or sad, or when I am alone in the basement and its cold, or under the table when everyone is having drinks and laughing very loud. It calms me to do that. To take care of myself, in that one little way, even now.

The Lupus

Ouch! My fingers are so stiff, my wrists and ankles are hot and painful, I've had a fever for more than a week that doesn't respond to Tylenol or anything else. My head hurts and spins when I move, and I wake up most nights in a puddle of cold sweat. I feel worn out and worn thin from all of the above.

Who knows how long this flare will last? I don't know and from what I've been reading and reading this week no one else will either.

But this evening a nice thought comes. I can still do just as much as I was recently wanting to do. I will have to adjust and do it differently. And who knows? Its an unplanned, unsought change, but maybe it will be the thing that in hindsight was a freaking gift. Its hurts a little to type: I become less wordy, always a comment I get in anything of mine that gets edited. I quibble less and become more decisive. I make better choices in content and subject because it hurts and I'm not very comfortable and if I'm going to make the effort I'm going to get to the point and its going to have to be worthwhile. No dithering. Better judgment.

That might not be such a bad thing. Also, fevers can make you kind of floaty and dreamy. Aren't we always reading about some incredible work done at a fever pitch, in a feverish state, with great heat? That doesn't sound like a bad precondition for poetry and prose alike.

At least it has such a nice name. Lupus, Latin for wolf, for the malar rash that in the first observed cases some theorized looked like a wolf-bite to the face.

At least I don't have a wolf-bite to the face. That would be worse.

People with lupus call themselves loopies. That works for me too.

Lupus! Welcome to BSD. Let's make friends, and have a really good time.

The Short List

I have a short list, and you do too. The people you can call and tell funny and horrifying and completely absurd things to who will make something that was just really great in your head become transcendent because now its both in your head and out in the world. The people who will equally enjoy the nuttiness you're telling them, as much as you're enjoying the nuttiness. The people you can hang up with and either a. never speak of it again or b. sit on it for a really long time and then bring it up in a very funny way at an inappropriate time or place. The people you talk to in your head when you're not together.

I can call my brother with lots of very obscure and wistful impersonations of foreign men with indiscriminate accents consumed with longing. I can call my friend D. with any observations regarding female anatomy, mine and others. She knows and teaches me all the good nicknames. Cookie! I never would have thought of cookie, and its perfect. I can call C. and egg her into a tirade and then just relax and enjoy the phenomenal show of wit and sarcasm (hers, not mine) that ensues. I can call D. and report just about anything in a Bill Cosby voice and be understood: why it needed to be said, and why it needed to be said in a Bill Cosby voice. Just about 20 years of the Bill Cosby calls in the Bill Cosby voice. Honestly, it makes me know the world is good and my life, if it ends today, has been blessed, lucky, full, and plenty. Plenty.

I was thinking all this because I was noticing this evening in the shower that my breasts are having the best day of their life. This day, 5/28/2013, at 10:25pm. They are at a particular kind of fullness due to impending hormonal events that must be interacting with a certain kind of moon or tide because they are glorious. Glorious! Perfect melons, peaches, every fruity cliche. I want to take a picture of them, and I want to go downtown and take them out because they are so magnificent this evening that they should be seen in the moonlight, reverently touched, gently kissed with the most feathering of kisses. Is it just me? Is this happening all over the city, like werewolves, only better? For one night, can we all take our fantastic breasts out of their hiding places and congregate out in the dewy air and stay up all night and just love them?

Its too late to call D., who is my short list person for this kind of thing (as teenagers, we did a certain amount of naked dancing in the rain). This could all be over by the morning, but I don't want to forget it. I have never had these breasts before, and I may never have them again. Its a beautiful visitation and a lovely reminder of just how wonderful the human body is, particularly the female form, and mine included. I'll write it here, to remember, to come back and visit. To maybe remember to remember and call D. about it tomorrow. Or maybe not.

The short list, I think, brings out your best voice. Your honest voice that says the truth. Candid, honest, authentic. How and who you really are. The gift is not in the personal liberation or the freedom of that, but rather something more modest: the simple opportunity to enjoy yourself. A funny side effect of AA, I think, is things just like this. When in my life have I ever had the pleasure of consistently hearing so many different people say so many different kinds of things, but all from the heart, honest and true? You can wait months to find your next great book that has a voice you want to keep talking after the last page. Go to an AA meeting and you're going to hear someone saying something at some point that you just don't want to stop.

You can also not go to AA, ever. I went to the playground today, and had a conversation with my friend K., who has very large and lovely breasts. Its a defining feature for her, and she mentions things about them in conversations the way you would about how your kids are doing in sports and in school. They have a presence and a life a little bit of their own. She was meant to bake brownies this afternoon, and made mention of the fact that for the past 25 years she has softened every stick of butter she's ever used to bake something by sticking it in her cleavage. And that brought me joy, to know that, for her to say it, and to share it with me. And it inspires me to follow her example and share my own breast joy tonight, out loud, without edit or particular caution, in my own honest voice. Just this night, while its here. It may be long gone by the morning.

I let K. know that I have had to settle for putting sticks of butter and occasionally baby bottles in my armpit. Nothing to be advertised to the recipients of my baked goods or mothering.

A good day is a chance to experience something, narrated in my own voice in my own head, that is worthy of expression to any one of the individuals on my short list. A good day is a day with even one thing that was really, really funny. Or joyful. Or absurd. Or simply honest. A good day is when I notice something great, and get to tell the story to someone who understands it and likes it too. Or even when I just get to tell the story at all.

Like about my breasts. My one-day-only, rounded, luminous and lovely breasts. Because saying that one, out loud, or just here, might also be one-day-only. Its honest and absurd and funny and true and on this day that works great for me.

Today was a good day.

Trash

I got a bloody nose at the art museum yesterday, my first bloody nose since, I think, first grade.

I have tissue packed up my nose here. My shoulder hurts like a bastard from the shoulder freeze, and I imagine the headache and sore throat and joint pain is from the lupus. THE LUPUS. That's how I think of it in my head.

So I rested my head against the stall like everyone does when they're sick in public places. And then I thought it was so miserable that I better get a picture of it. And then I thought, that looks really stupid, me taking a picture of me with my cell phone being pathetic. And then I cracked up and said to my self (out loud, its always out loud, for me): Bitch! Get your candy-ass back out there!

And I did and it was a great rest of the day. And now I love this photo. Melodrama! I do it really, really well. I am talented. Here's my bloody tissue that I saved from yesterday as proof. Just in case the doctor wants to see it when they let me know its THE LEUKEMIA and not THE LUPUS as I'd thought from the diagnostic criteria on Google.

Bitch! Get up off the floor! Break's over. We have work to do!

Off Night (from 12/2008)

No bad poetry tonight. Two of my patients died yesterday and I'm just sitting with it tonight. I remember all my patients and some always stay with me more than others. These two were something more though I don't know why just yet.

They were both 51. I "met" T. during staff meeting two Mondays ago. The nurses started passing around photos of T.'s wounds - eight stage 4 wounds, the worst any of them had seen. They loved it, literally. A lot of the nurses will say they just love wounds. And they do. Most of the chaplains and social workers declined to look at the pictures as they went around, but T. was assigned to be my patient, so I thought I should look. This was a major piece of his reality, so if its my job to understand and support him in his reality, I thought I ought to look. So I did. And it was bad. I had to concentrate on nothing but suppressing the gag reflex for a few minutes. Slough, tunneling, green drainage. Right to the bone. His body, literally, rotting off of him.

I saw him three times on three different days and he was in excruciating pain despite the huge doses of morphine Deb, the nurse, put him on. He had a tremendous quiet dignity. Each wound was colonized with MRSA and VRE and so no touching allowed. He wanted to see the Atlantic again. I had it lined up to take him by ambulance to Plum Island with Deb and Heather, his hospice aide. I got permission to drive the ambulance onto the beach from the wildlife refuge rangers and we were going to back on, open the bay doors, crank him up, and - Atlantic. I knew it wouldn't happen because he was going to die too fast but I made the calls anyway and got the funding. It just felt right to do that. In the end I sat beside him and talked him there instead. He was just a truly lovely guy and he had really nice friends and family who all came to see him. I last saw him Monday as he was dying and I touched his hands and kept my hand on his forehead for a long time. Totally not supposed to do that, a little stupid to do that and likely got the second viral pneumonia because of it but I had to. It was the right thing, for me at least, to do.

J. was also 51. Mother in this unbelievably gracious Lebanese family in this tiny apartment in the junky part of Methuen. Breast cancer for 13 years that when we came along had metastasized to her brain and liver and probably lots of other places too. She had this very calm, peaceful and luminous quality to her. And an extremely cute little funny giggle. She loved us and we loved her. The Monday before Thanksgiving the family made us a Lebanese feast - the chaplain Jim, Beth the nurse, and me. Their kitchen table moved into the living room and overflowing with homemade everything - beautiful, fresh vegetables, grains, pomegranate seeds, avacado, beets, tabouleh, grapes, pears, apples. I had to tell them the whole thing about not giving us gifts and just leting us come and be of service - the whole office policy speech, but we ate with them and said we would never tell if they didn't just don't do it again because how can you refuse an offering of self like that? And they understood, though G., the husband, took to kissing me on top of the head and telling me and Beth that we were his daughters and that he was going to buy us homes in Lebanon. That afternoon was the last time J. got out of bed. Jim led a prayer and we all held hands in a circle and I'm not a praying sort but I will say it was one of those moments and in my memory we all did sort of float up in a circle for a little while, it was so light, and joyful. And J. died yesterday morning and Beth was there and she said the sunlight was streaming in the windows. She called me right afterwards at 8:30 in the morning even though it was my day off. And sunlight was streaming in my windows too. So that was good.

Assorted Candies (from 12/2008)

For 10 hours of hospice, today was a sexy day. This is why.

1.
One of the nurses I work with just stood up from her cube out of nowhere today and smiled this very radiant smile at M., the other social worker, and me, and you could immediately see that she was just completely all there and in herself at that moment, just totally present, and she said

I just want to tell you that I love you guys. I really do. You're always there for me and you're always so awesome and I'm having endogenous opioids today and its a fresh start and a new day and I love you both.

And she really meant it. And I looked at M., who is not demonstrative in this sort of a way, and I considered my own feelings, because though while generally in favor of loving and positive feelings and the free expression of these kinds of things I also have boundaries and am a little bit sensible too. But I tell you, M. and I got up and it was like we were all just a little more there, instantly, like color saturated or something, and we told her we loved her too and we hugged all together and it was electric and gorgeous and totally true. And that was at about 8:45am this morning, half an hour into my work day.

2.
Also to do with R., this particular nurse, was a patient we both saw over at my favorite nursing home today. This lady is really pretty demented but is content in her reality and mostly looks off into space except when you directly address her, in which case she looks at you with this big smile with her two remaining teeth, and says a few related words, and then checks right back out into pleasantland. And its great that she is in pleasantland because she mostly doesn't eat anymore and doesn't get up anymore and has a really, really awful wound that she's on a lot of medication to control the pain from.

And so today R. had to change her dressing on that wound and I was down the hall finishing up and when I came by I couldn't hear the words R. was saying but I caught her tone and I thought, uh-oh and so I went in. R. was clearly shaken up and who wouldn't be because this poor lady was just hanging on the bedrail with all her might and sobbing the saddest sob I have ever heard. And I know this lady went to Hawaii once and so I got down on my knees and I just started recalling in as much detail as I could every single thing, smell, taste, feel anything at all of Hawaii and using all the Hawaiian names I could think of too, talking about plumeria and hibiscus and hummingbirds so tiny disappearing into the hibiscus and on and on and she stopped crying and R. stopped looking shaken up and suddenly we were all, I think, in Hawaii together, and it was so lush and verdant and sensual and just sexy and I thought, and I know we all felt it, how did we all just get to sexy after a thing like that? And it was an amazing gorgeous electric moment, and we all looked in each other's eyes and it was all there and true and part of me still can't believe it except I know it because even now close to 12 hours later I can feel it inside.

3.
There's this Italian aide at this same favorite nursing home and I don't even know his name but he's about my age and has a long ponytail and he sings in Italian all the time and though he isn't empirically speaking half-bad looking that is not the thing about him. The thing about him is that he is so incredibly genuinely kind. I watch him with the various patients while I'm doing my charting at the nurses' station and I see the way he really, truly, loves all these old and not so good smelling and sometimes very unhappy patients. He is so tender and gentle and respectful and lovely with them and he smiles at them and sings to them and sometimes he just holds them and lets them be however they are and I really see him and I get embarrassed because I think he catches me watching sometimes and I don't want him to think its a flirty thing because it isn't, its just so beautiful, and I catch him watching me sometimes with my patients because, honestly, I really do love my patients too.

And so its like we're two lighthouses crossing beams sometimes although we never speak or really acknowledge each other, except for one time a couple of weeks ago. I was leaning against the wall waiting for the elevator after a very long and sad day with a few deaths, two while I was in the room, and one that was really awful with a lot of pain and moaning and suffering that we never were able to make better. And I'm sure my hair was up in a mess the way it usually is after a day like that, and I'm sure I looked like leftovers, the way I usually do after a day like that. And what he did is walk up to me and briefly hold my shoulders and looked at me and then kissed me very gently on the cheek and then walked away and I was stunned and blushed I'm sure. But then by the time the elevator came I got it and stopped blushing and just smiled and we never spoke of it or even to each other instantly back to our usual silent mutual appreciation society at every subsequent visit. And I saw him today wiping the drool from someone and he saw me doing the Hawaii thing and afterwards as I was waiting for the elevator he just smiled at me as he does and I smiled back as I do and it was quiet and gorgeous and true and lovely.

4.
This evening I was driving just at dusk to go admit a new home patient a few towns over. The air was just unbelievable. Sixtyish, a little humid, a little breezy, a warm breeze, not a chilly one. In December. It did something to me. All I could think of was, this is sexy, sexy air. And it was sexy. I could not think of anything but the urge to go skinnydipping in the Merrimack as I drove along its banks, and I thought, I should really be thinking about this patient, and going over what not to forget to check into (funeral plans, DNR in place, don't smoke ciggies next to the O2 tank) and what I wanted to do was be naked in the air and then naked in the water. Except that it would be frigid and so I didn't do that. But I still kind of wish I'd found a good thick stand of trees and not been running 15 minutes late because I might have taken care of the first bit. I am still thinking about it tonight and I am wishing I could figure out where this particular air mass is from because I don't think its from generally just south of here. I think this is a magical air mass from some place kind of unusual and special and a little sexy, and someone out there has the technology to track it and know it and I wish they would put it on the news because I bet I'm not the only one who noticed it today. I bet Prince was on vacation somewhere, and slept in this air mass, and then it travelled on up to Haverhill, MA and got tangled up with me and that is probably the case because Prince is the kind of guy who can pull off stuff like that. But that's the truth. There was something in the air today and it was lovely and sexy all day today and I tell you, it was really pretty pleasant and enjoyable and I'm pretty grateful to have had a sensual sexy day in the middle of December on a Monday at work in a bunch of nursing homes. Thank you Prince, wherever you are.

Untitled

the sky is slanted
the sky is soft

I made a body of work
I hunch
I hunker
I squat down over it
I pack things back in
dirty
dry and tacky
was it packed with mud
what if it becomes infectious, purulent
what becomes of it

do I miss you
do I miss the way you make me feel
is it you
or is it me

I slice
nice and clean
slivers

I slice through
debride and flush
pack it
wrap it
and mail it to you.

Couplet Without Photo

indelible stain
part of the fabric

Hemingway, Fitzgerald and I: Drinking and Writing

So sick, so sick.
I can barely see. I can barely
hear what you say. you keep saying. You
keep not saying.
good bye. why not. why not. what's 40 years or
one in billions. what's the point. what was
the point. what was
so fucking important. I ask you that.
I ask you that and you will
never, ever, answer. He was
sobbing at the foot of the stairs. Did you
ever see him sobbing before? No
you did not. Drive around the block,
drive around, drive around shorter or longer or
not at all not as you'd admit
as you meant to. What we miss. Oh I miss you though
we never meet. But we're here all the time. Listen.
We're here all the time.
We're not alone. You.
You are not alone.
I love you. You know I do. I love you
whatever. Fuck you too.
These are minutes. These are
all we have. Be sure. Be so sure,

Here they go. Here I go. I'm not sick.
I'm well. Its going well. Thank fucking god.

Thank god. Its god you know, in the air, what it is
its god
its God.

Temperance

I'm not that nice, are you?
I'm the angry smoking girl. I'm the
smoking girl
with the orange hair
I burn it all down
and leave it all smoking
an ashy pile of cinders
I'll ash on your rug. I'll ash on your floor. I'll
smoke in your bed I'll need
ashtrays to ash in. I bellow
smoke, like a dragon, an angry one. I'm the
smoking girl of Racine Street
I will be in your bed
when you come home
angry and smoking
late at night
a glowing tip, in the darkness
smoldering
waiting
to immolate
working
to go from Code Orange
to Code Red
doused
in accelerant
reeking
and stinking

going up in flames
going up in smoke
and
fire fire

FIRE.

Closing Bell

One thing I do like about being an alcoholic is the new finish line for the day, this day, or any other day. If I didn't have a drink today, then job well done. No other accounting really matters. You can relieve yourself posthaste of any worry, doubt, anxiety, or fear related to what you did, or didn't, produce. You can relieve yourself! You don't even need anyone else to say it.

I did not do so much today. I went to a meeting this morning and I listened attentively and I gave a message of nonverbal love, affection, pride and gratitude to K., who both spoke at the meeting and received his one-year medallion. I gave him a hug after just to say congratulations, and suddenly we were holding on to each other for dear life.  What was that unexpectedly intense and long embrace, congratulatory hug turned into wordless communique of hold on, thank you, I love you, I love you?

When you're in anyone's arms for long enough, shit is going to surface, I suppose. It turns out K. is my AA buddy but he is also a soldier, a simple stupid grunt, like me, and we are fighting to save our lives and our souls in this war. Maybe that was it. He told a little of his war story today, and I had to grab onto him as veterans grab onto each other.  I was there too. I saw that shit too. I almost died too. I can never thank you enough for what you did for me. I love you. I love you. And at the end of today, I can look back on it, and I understand that those words are about me and about K. and about both of us together. And they're true. So perhaps I should have known that I was going to bury my face in his chest, and he was not going to let go of my back and neck and shoulders for awhile, and we were both going to have eyes swimming with tears at the end of it.

Christ. Usually we're talking about if the cookies are any good that day and where the missing people are: treatment, relapse, or jail.

It was a positive thing, but for whatever reason it also sapped me of everything and at 9:07 am this morning I was pretty much done for the day. A lot of West Wing reruns and website visiting followed. In my former life, I might have thought this was unproductive.

But if you drink the AA Koolaid, which I suppose I have (really, you're either in or you're out, and I am all done testing the out part) you can arrive quickly at this: If I didn't have a drink today, then good job, and that's job enough. End of story. You've had your hearty meal of churned butter and rough bread and farm stew after rinsing your dusty neck and face at the pump, and now you can sink into clean sheets and downy pillows in well-earned exhaustion, and sleep the beautiful sleep of the totally spent.

AA says: One day at a time. Just for today. Keep it in the day. All any of us has is today. A truism and map for living that is both scientifically correct and spiritually nontheistic but, nevertheless, uplifting in a Buddhist simple-essential-truth kind of way.

Enough then. I stayed away from a drink today. I did not put a drink or a substance in my body today. I have one day sober. I have a great number of days before this that I was sober, but those are all the past now. They are gone. I have a great number of days to come that I will be sober, but they do not yet exist. They are a fiction. There is only today.

So, K. and his red T-shirt. Not too much else to tell. A low-ball day. But an honest and true one. An awake one. A sober one, for a recovering alcoholic.

One magnificent, fine fucking day indeed! Beautiful. I love it. I love AA. I love K. I love that its enough, and that I get to have relief, and peace, and go to bed happy, full, alive, and absolutely spent.

I hope I have a deep and peaceful sleep, with dreams. I wish that for all of us.

Flash 5.24.13

Its a cheap shot, calling her a rube. So what if she is 35 pounds overweight, and that weight clusters around her thighs, upper arms, and belly? So what if her clothes are too tight and too short for someone her age, or anyone. So what if they're not flattering. 

She has more to worry about, more important things to think about, than if she is being flattering or not. She is standing up there in tiny shorts and squeezey tee and she is reading to us about how it works and reminding all of us that we don't have to drink no matter what. We can keep it simple, let go and let god, easy does it, as the little blue and yellow fringed banners around her remind us. 

We have didactic teaching and visual aids here. We are being given everything we need. It is unimportant that she is not dressed for this cooler weather, and with some effort, you can stop looking at and thinking about how her legs show little circuits of red vascular loops over her white white skin, how her circulation is unhappy with the cold. You can stop seeing that simply by closing your eyes, and listening instead. You can make a choice to listen only to her voice and try to understand what she is saying. 

You'll run into her later in the grocery store with her friend that she is always with who isn't anywhere near as sober. Are they friends because they are or does she just need that friend in a symbiotic way because she needs the rides and she still has a year to go before she can get her license back? 

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Stop looking, stop thinking those thoughts with your monkey brain. So what if she's going to make a lasagna tonight? All you need to know is what she told you. You can practice these principles in all your affairs. You really can. 

She is the proof.

30:5

For his anger endureth but a moment, in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but 

joy cometh in the morning.

My True Identity

Love Tat

Where to Begin

Where to begin? Begin at the beginning. That's been said before, not by me. I'm not going to do that. Nothing is particularly linear anyway and that's the truth. Neural networks will teach you that.

This is me at work. This is L., my patient, who with his 5 brothers went to World War II. I listened to L. tell me about the war for about, maybe, 50 hours total over the course of 18 months or so. He has a purple heart. His wife was my patient too and I sat in between them for a week holding both of their hands. They were side by side in twin beds, her dying, him sick and crying and scared. And she died, and he lived. He remained my patient.

That's my table that was my great-grandmother's. That's my mug that makes me think its funny everytime I use it and gives me an amused feeling that I like. That's the pen I used when I signed my resignation letter and faxed it in and therefore could no longer go visit L. and, you know, listen and be with, as I formerly did.

That's me giving him a certificate of recognition for his military service as well as one for his late wife, who was also a veteran.

I could write a book about me, for the top photo and what's on my table, and I could make it all true and it would be a little bit shocking and also a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, which Dave Eggers got to before me. Some people hog all the good names.

I could write a book about L., and me, or just L., and I could even write a book about just the few political and personal and beautiful and terrible things flying around the room in just that photo about that moment, me, L., a company, death, medicine, politics, war, ethics, love, terror, a certificate on a piece of paper. It would be a little bit shocking and also staggering, heartbreaking, and genius in an obvious kind of way. I would like to write that book but I'm not sure if I can do it and make it true. If I couldn't tell it true, I don't want to tell it at all. The closest I can come for now is just to allude to it. But that is a beginning.

I notice now how he's holding on to my wrist. That was really the point, the truth, of the whole thing, although I don't know if anyone other than L. and I and the photographer, his daughter, ever got that part straight.

I thought about these photos of photos about 10 minutes ago while I was taking a pee in my house, and what it felt like in both of those photos. What lead to it and where it is now. Both of those photos go together. While I was peeing they just came to me and I thought, The whole team could not bear the idea of death and in fact were traumatized and terrified and though end-of-life professionals with training, experience, expertise, regulation and oversight, brought it to subtly and constantly bear upon me to stop it. Just stop it, somehow.

And that was hard. But I withstood it.

But it did wear on me too.

I can understand it better now. I forgive it.

I'm glad I never bought into that. Trying to stop it. That would make a person go nuts.

I'm so glad for that photo of me and L. and that he is holding my wrist and that I know I am feeling happy to be with him in that moment. I remember that moment perfectly even though this past Sunday and most of Monday are an absolute and total mystery that I can only reconstruct by scrolling through texts and messages on my phone.

I was happy then. I was happy. I loved L. and I still love him and that's all that was going on, in truth, in that photo. There are all kinds of clues and inferences and I'm wearing a lanyard and a badge and that's not the point.

We were happy. We were touching each other. It was good to both of us to do that. It was mutual. It was understood. It was safe and loving and kind and not terrifying and death was in the room. We were happy.

I was happy today and while I was peeing and I'm really happy right now.

That's the truth. If I had that photo with me right now, in bed, I would press it to my chest, my heart, and turn off the light, and keep pressing it against me, and fall asleep smiling in the dark, feeling happy, and full of love, love, love.

I hope I can sleep now.

Its A Total Sunset In Here

I Don't Know How They Keep Finding Me

Any Given Tuesday

New Hampshire

Don't Give Up The Ship

dx and px

Easter came, then went.
I have this illness, this disease.
Its at odds with resurrection, rising, birth, life.
It wants me
dead.
Dead is not so bad. Yet,
claws in the wood, dragging a steady length of scratch
all the way down.

No. No, if you, if anyone, asks:
I am not ready
at all
to go.

April, As Is

As it turns out
I have nothing
to say to you.
Nor you
me.
Are we hung out to dry? I'm
not yet dry
how about you, or anyone you know? It
doesn't matter. Its just shipping
and receiving
and loading
docks. I love a dock best in the morning
with no wind
a piece of bread
and the friendship of expectant fish
ogling me
but appropriately so
through the scrim of breath-still water
water, temperature, fog and mist
everything rising
up
and up
to clear skies
and solid state sun
ripple
sparkle
and watch.

North

We only part to meet again.
Change, as ye list, ye winds;
my heart shall be the faithful compass that still points to thee.

 - author unknown

Untitled

I wake up on time in the morning, I put the kids on the bus, I get immediately back in bed and sleep for hours. I dream the whole time; when I wake, I'm three minutes away from being late. No time at all. I scribble out the words from the dream to look up later in the dream dictionary:

shrimp
clogged drain
crawlspace
wood shavings
boiling water
resuscitate
kangaroo

Later, in the middle of a meeting, I recover a part of the dream in total clarity: I was in this same room. The light coming through the windows was just the same. The tiled floor was the same. I was hovering over a living but unconscious body, I know what to do, I know I'm not totally supposed to do it, but I know in my heart its the right thing to do. I give my Subaru keys to someone in the crowd, the blue one, blue bag, runrunrun. And when they get back with the blue bag I draw up a syringe of Narcan and just as I am focusing with all my might on getting the needle in exactly right here

I wake up. And its like that all week. I go back to sleep. I dream and dream. Towards the end, I am resuscitating someone, somewhere. And I wake up, never knowing if I was successful or not.

Notes

Why That Makes You So Lonely

That was the very last thing you saw when you turned back for one more look into the empty house, as you always do turn back for one more look although no one, and not even you, can say why; just before pulling the door shut, and locking it.

All set here. And this is all it is.

Untitled

I.

I Come Home From Work
and Park in the Emergency Snow Parking-Ban Lot
of My City:


The stars, the stars, the
etoiles are spinning, its dark, its icy,
they're icy up in space, I am
on my back on earth on snow looking up
and staring at these mind-fucking-blowing
points spots dots pins
of light
of energy
of matter or no matter of
something SO FAR AWAY that I
can huffyhuff my steamy breath at them and they
go faster
spinning stars getting milliony and
complicated and speeding
twirling whirling so fast they throw up a

pile of glitter.


II.

I Reflect Briefly on This During
the Short Walk Home
From the Emergency Snow Parking-Ban Lot
of My City:

Snow in my faux
fur hood like I was a
real animal like I was alive and
glittering my night eyes
and a buzz of happiness banging
like a fly against a window
on a hot day
banging BANG
against the soft warm walls
of my heart
you in there
stars and stars and stars
just so many cool breaths in and
out and thumpythump
no shitty glitter
same stars and

years, years, years.

Five Reasons Why

Voila

Untitled

I woke up this morning,
I was born. I

hit my knees
as a suggestion. I counted to twelve
throughout the day.

I was both fast and slow, I went in and out. I stopped eating, for a bit. I worked
a resentment
like a meaty bone
all afternoon and

finally, I just threw it away. I'm a channel of
peace and an instrument of
love, after all.

Also, a liar, a cheat, and a thief. I'm
what you've got. We're family! I injured you, though

I don't remember how, or when, or why. Nevertheless,
I'm sorry. Really sorry. I do what I can
to amend the situation. $147.50 and a

hand-written letter of apology
that you can keep
forever. FOREVER.

I'm so relieved. Are you relieved? You may still have your
antennae up. Its not a bad idea, actually. It could be
your signal pick-ups

that lead to the rigorous honesty we
will need to ACCURATELY
count up all the knives, forks, clocks, coffee mugs
that 1. constitute our little inventory of defects and defective people, places and things
       2. keeps us out of that particular, special hellhole

where our chances
are less than average. I went there

once and trust me, my newcomer, my new friend
YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE SO UNFORTUNATE. That's a
very thinly veiled metaphor
by the way. So anyway, getting
back to today,

You do not want to screw around with that place. That place
will eat you
alive.

You could die.

In case I'm wrong, however,
I sincerely apologize.

Have a cup of coffee.
Have a cookie. Listen,
shut up. Its a miracle, but
you'll be OK.

Use your numbers. Come back. Tell your story. Tell it humbly.
Keep at it. Keep it up.
Good for you (applause)! Keep coming back! We love you!


You can have a hug, probably, if you want one.

That's all there is to it.

Conditions Are Such That; Conditions Will Deteriorate

Fostering